Troy man among Cold War-era veterans, families seeking more recognition for service

Tom Cameron, 75, of Troy discusses how an eight-inch howitzer shell accidentally struck and killed 16 U.S. soldiers while at a training camp in Grafenwoehr, Germany in 1960. Cameron, who was at the training camp, served as a tank driver during the Cold War. Photo by Aftab Borka/The Oakland Press

It was an accidental explosion — friendly fire. American soldiers were training in Grafenwoehr, Germany, on Sept. 2, 1960, when an 8-inch, 200-pound howitzer shell overshot its intended target.

The shell, caused by a “human error,” crashed into tents occupied by the 12th Cavalry, 3rd Armored Division. The men had just arrived the night before, and less than 24 hours later, 15 of them had died from the blast, which also injured 27.

And about 50 feet away from the explosion stood Tom Cameron, 75, now a Troy resident. A tank driver who later occupied the Fulda Gap between East and West Germany during the Cold War, Cameron had just finished breakfast and proceeded to clean up the area. He said he then walked toward the road while his gunner, Augustus Saurino, went in the opposite direction.

Soldiers went to Grafenwoehr to become more acquainted with weapons and technology, and to prepare for possible confrontations with the Soviet Union, said Rudy Rau, a webmaster for the 3rd Armored Division’s website, who was two miles from the explosion at Grafenwoehr.

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They went there preparing for conflict, but found themselves in one.

A lasting impact

Around 8 a.m., when the shell stuck a supply tent containing weapons, Cameron said, everybody fell to the ground, preparing for another explosion. It never came. But when Cameron looked around the training ground, which he called “tent city,” it suddenly had fewer tents. And the sergeants didn’t know how to react to the situation.

“They finally got us, and walked us around, in a column of twos walked us around,” he said. “Here’s these guys crying, shaking, and all they did was march us around. That’s all they did.”

About two minutes before the tragedy, then-19-year-old Saurino of New York was heading toward a warehouse to retrieve a garbage bag. The artillery round landed nearby; Cameron was the last person to see him. He had originally roomed with Saurino and another soldier.

“When we came back, there was only two of us left in the room,” Cameron said. “It was kind of tough. I just feel that nobody knows about this.”

Another soldier who witnessed the shell strike the tents eventually became a prominent public official. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell writes about it in his autobiography called “My American Journey.”

“I stopped, frozen, and actually saw the 8-inch round come in,” Powell writes. “It struck a tent pole in the 12th Cavalry’s sector, detonating in an airburst. The roar was deafening, followed by a terrifying silence... I had seen a hundred war movies, but nothing had prepared me for the sights I saw that day.”

The New York Times ran a front-page story about the tragedy on Sept. 3, 1960, headlined “15 G.I.’S KILLED, 28 HURT BY SHELL.” The Associated Press ran a story the next day, adding another soldier to the list of casualties, and describing a memorial service held for the soldiers in which about 3,000 soldiers “paid final tribute to their dead comrades,” the article stated. A picture accompanies the story that shows soldiers surrounded by 16 helmets.

Cameron came back to the U.S. two years after the incident. But something troubled him: No one was aware of the tragedy, and there was no national memorial in Washington, D.C. for those who died during the Cold War.

Years later, he read an article published in 2007 by a military publication headlined “Small plaque keeps memory of 16 soldiers alive.” Yet the plaque is in Germany, not in D.C.

After reading the article, “I’m wondering, why the hell don’t we have a memorial in Washington?” he said. “There should be a memorial in Washington, but nobody knows about it.”

Cameron’s not the only one who remembers this tragedy, or feels this way about it. Hundreds of miles away in New York, Michael Saurino, Augustus Saurino’s brother, wants a national monument, or memorial, put up in our nation’s capital. American Cold War Veterans, a national organization, would like more recognition for Cold War-era veterans, as well.

Michael Saurino was 15 years old when Augustus Saurino died. Last year, Cameron got in touch with Saurino after their sons networked with each other through the Internet. Cameron then sent him a few photos of him and Augustus. And both of them talked about the lack of a memorial, a monument – some kind of recognition.

“Basically, all I wanted to get is some little medal, or some recognition for my mother,” Saurino said in a phone interview. “My mother’s 92 and she’s kind of been carrying this around for like 54 years. I feel personally that if anybody gave their life in the military, which is the ultimate sacrifice, and you’re in uniform, you died for your country regardless of how you died. Do you always have to be shot by the enemy?”

There are small memorials and monuments across the country in memory of the Cold War. There’s a Victim’s of Communism memorial in D.C. Its website says it commemorates “100 million victims of communism worldwide.” But none of them has a comprehensive list that includes all the names of those in the American military who lost their lives during the Cold War.

Decades of tension

The Cold War lasted 46 years, from 1945 to 1991. Sometimes it became warm. For instance, in 1969 two North Korean MiGs, or fighter jets, shot down a U.S. Navy electronic intelligence plane carrying 31 crew members, the New York Times reported. Although North Korea was not part of the Soviet Union, it had a mutual defense pact with the Union. That’s why then-president Richard Nixon only offered more protection for planes on reconnaissance missions, instead of implementing anything that could have lead to conflict.

Both judge advocate of Michigan-based American Veterans Post 1072 Don Lotter and the American Cold War Veterans organization cite 382 deaths caused by enemy fire. Chairman of the Cold War veterans group, Dr. Frank Tims said that is a conservative estimate.

“There were a lot more than are generally acknowledged to be killed in the Cold War,” Tims said, “but they were under different circumstances at different times. And people have forgotten them. They’re our forgotten heroes.”

Some Cold War-era veterans received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for their service in Lebanon in 1958, for their occupation of the Taiwan Straits Crisis, and for their service during the Cuban Missile Crisis, among others. Yet some vets received a different form of recognition.

Instead of a National Defense Service Medal, an award for honorary service in the military, some veterans can only receive a Cold War Recognition Certificate. Established by Congress in 1998, the certificate can be obtained not only by members of the armed forces who served during the Cold War, but also civilians who worked for the federal government, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1999.

“When I applied for mine, I had some civil service time and I just sent in my pay slip from my time with the National Institute of Health; it had nothing to do with the Cold War at all,” Tims said in a phone interview. “I’d love to see someone who simply worked at the post office during the holidays apply for it and get it.”

Michigan efforts

Cold War vets in Michigan cannot join the Michigan Legion. That’s because the legion consists of veterans who served during a “war time,” said Mark Sutton, public relations director of the American Legion’s Michigan department. Sutton noted in an email that there are Cold War veterans in the Legion because they, like him, served in a war time era in addition to the Cold War.

Lotter, 74, of Clifford, Mich., is another veteran in the American Legion who qualifies because he was in the Cold War from ’63 to ’65, which was during the Vietnam War. Since 2008, Lotter has been trying to amend the war time clause in Michigan Public Act 190 of 1965 because it excludes Cold War veterans, except for those who received an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. He tried amending the bills two times, but to no avail.

Lotter compares the treatment of Cold War-era vets to relative deprivation in which, he said, 190,000 Cold War veterans are not included in the war time clause. He believes calling Cold War vets “peacetime” veterans to be a misnomer. And he thinks anyone who served the armed forces should receive the same benefits as those who fought in hot wars.

Lotter said he became interested in amending the act when he met a Marine, William Phillipson, of Millington, Mich., who was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. When Phillipson went to the Veteran Affairs office in Tuscola County, he wasn’t able to receive benefits, Lotter said, since he was a Cold War veteran.

“So he got treatment at the VA, and his condition slowly worsened,” Lotter said. “He died two years later. He left a wife and three children. A judge declared them bankrupt on Christmas Eve of 2009, I think, and so our American Legion Post paid for his funeral.”

Lotter, thereby, began trying to amend the bills so other veterans wouldn’t have to go through the same pain that Phillipson’s family endured — and to acknowledge veterans of the Cold War.

He, along with other veterans groups such as the American Cold War Veterans, has tried to establish a Cold War Victory Medal, but it has yet to be approved in Washington D.C. The Cold War is a victory for the U.S., he said, since it avoided nuclear war and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And yet Lotter knows Cold War veterans who won’t participate in parades or join the Veterans Service Commission. They think their service inadequate.

Although accidental, 16 U.S. soldiers died in a friendly-fire explosion that remains relatively unknown – along with the estimated 382 men who died in Cold War conflicts. The only people who remember are the people who were there, or the families who are still waiting for more recognition.

They want medals, a national memorial, bills changed, more awareness and recognition — and they’re getting older.

“I gave a good six years of effort and so I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lotter said. “I think someday it will eventually be approved but I don’t know who will be the driver to do it.”